- Welcome to Independent Lens.
I'm Pete Schwaba, host of PBS Wisconsin's Director's Cut.
My knowledge of comic books
pretty much starts and ends with Archie,
so I am really looking forward to tonight's film
about several LGBTQ+ comic book artists
that go from the comic underground
and virtual anonymity
to the covers of major magazines and international notoriety.
The film is called No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics.
No Straight Lines follows five cartoonists
who explore everyday issues facing the LGBTQ community
through their artistry.
These artists are considered pioneers in the comic industry,
and through their work, have depicted everything
from the AIDS crisis to coming out, same sex marriage,
as well as gender identity and disabilities.
They bring their own unique perspective to these subjects,
in effect helping bring attention
to the queer comic movement.
The film is directed by Vivian Kleiman,
a Stanford University professor of documentary film.
In No Straight Lines, she draws parallels
between the rise of comics
and the rise of the LGBTQ+ movement.
Kleiman is a Peabody Award-winning filmmaker
whose work is noted for its cultural
and stylistic diversity.
Her films have also received Oscar and Emmy nominations.
The subjects she's tackled as a documentarian are varied
and include topics such as international adoption
to the burning of a Black church by a Ku Klux Klan member
to a former U.S. Marine
who learned to accept his son's homosexuality
after initially rejecting it.
In this particular film, Kleiman seems to have as much fun
exploring the evolution of the comic book
as she does the evolution of her leading actors
and following them as they receive the recognition
they worked so hard for.
I'm sure Vivian Kleiman can relate to that.
I'm also gonna go out on a limb
and say that Vivian must be a fellow Archie fan, right?
No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics starts now
on PBS Wisconsin, your home for independent film.